


I Carry Your Heart

by Dreaming_in_Circles



Category: Mad Max Fury road, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gift Giving, Mutual Pining, Post-Movie, Slow Burn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreaming_in_Circles/pseuds/Dreaming_in_Circles
Summary: The problem is, Furiosa gets so many mixed signals from Max’s dumb ass.Max leaves because he doesn’t want to be a part of this. He comes back because he misses her so much it makes his stomach ache.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post by v8roadworrier and shaaktitardis on tumblr: https://dreaming-in-circles.tumblr.com/post/184285310977/shaaktistardis-lurkinghistoric#notes
> 
> I hope you don't mind I borrowed your perfect, perfect idea.

The problem is, Furiosa gets so many mixed signals from Max’s dumb ass. First he risks life and limb to travel to the vuvalini, then refuses when she offers him a bike to come with them, ~~and it stings like a rejection,~~  but he comes back! And risks his life again to give them a chance at a future that is more than a death drive into the wasteland. He  _saves her life_  when she’s hurt, literally giving her his lifeblood and she was prepared to marry him on the spot. But then he leaves  _again_. Mother knows she loves his dumb ass and will let him do whatever it is he needs to do ~~, but he’s breaking her heart~~. 

And then he comes back! And he has pieces he found in some scrapyard somewhere that make her new arm work better, and he has oil that makes it move nicer, and he helps her rework it so the fingers are more usable and everything’s a bit more delicate and she’s a rough-and-tumble person, but she likes nice things every once in a while, and it makes her feel feminine in a way she hasn’t really since she left the vuvalini for the first time and it makes her feel good.

and then he leaves again.

When he comes back the second time, he’s got a new gun that’s more manageable one-handed, and it takes a very specific kind of bullet that she  _knows_ is damn near impossible to find, but he has  _lots_.  _Dozens_ of rounds. And damn but she could kiss him if she didn’t think that could scare him off completely. So she wraps her good arm around his shoulders and noogies him with her metal one, and his hair gets caught in the joints, and they spend ten minutes trying to untangle it before he just takes a knife and slashes it all off, and gives himself a near bald spot on the top of his head. So she takes the razor that Immortan Joe left behind and cuts the rest of his hair for him, and he l _ets her._ He lets her cut and scrape with a razor so sharp she could carve veins into his skull, and he just sits there and lets her, and when she’s done he grunts out something about needing to do his face to, so she spins him around where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, and squats down next to him and starts of his face. He flinches, and the he relaxes, and by the time she’s done he looks like he could fall asleep, he’s so calm. She’s never seen him like that before. And she falls a bit more in love just then.

and then he leaves again.

He brings seeds to her the third time. He doesn’t trade for them with the woman in charge of the garden. He brings them directly to her. He doesn’t ask her for anything. He grunts at her to open her hand, and puts a folded piece of cloth in her upturned palm, and unfolds it with painstaking care to reveal five tiny seeds at the center, and just leaves in her hand. When she gets over the shock and asks him what he wants for them, he just shakes his head and looks down and walks away. She takes them to the garden immediately, but she makes him go with her so he doesn’t disappear on her. They stay up late swapping stories about rigs gone wrong, and when he gets up to leave and find an open bed, she knows there won’t be any at that hour, and drags him to her bed with her. He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t push her away when she wraps her arms around his back like a vine, and she falls asleep to the sound of his breathing.

It’s that night that she realizes she’s done something. Something that, in the place where he’s from, makes them married. Some kind of wasteland rule that she didn’t know because she was raised by the vuvalini, it’s got to be. It’s the only explanation for why he brings her things and doesn’t demand anything from her – not like he used to when she first met him – and why he sleeps next to her all the time now. He stays for days after that first time, and it’s _wonderful_ , and every night – even if he was on the other side of the rock, he comes back to _her_ room and drops into _her_ bed and lets _her_ wrap her arms around him.

She married him without even knowing it, but damn if she’s going to object. Mother _knows_ she loves him with all she’s got in her.

\------

Max leaves because he doesn’t want to be a part of this. Fixing things is going to be messy and bad and hard and he doesn’t have the stomach for that sort of thing anymore. Maybe before, but not any more.

He comes back because he misses her so much it makes his stomach ache. He’s never thought about someone as much as he thinks about her since them. He’s never cared about someone as much as her since them. He thinks about her so much it drives him to distraction during the day and haunts his dreams at night, and he feels bad because he is no where near good enough to deserve her – she is so far out of his league – she’s basically perfect and he’s a fucking disaster –

He decides he can’t live without her one day, around dawn, and starts making plans to return. He needs something that will at least make her like him, and he needs something that will make him useful enough that she’ll want to keep him around. He doesn’t know if anyone’s rebuilt her arm, or if she has, or if she needs one still, so he makes plans to help make a better one than she had last time. He haunts scrapyards from here to Bullet Town and fights off the gun boys for first pick of the scrap heaps there. When he finds stuff he thinks he can use, he goes back to the Citadel and offers them to her. She has an arm, but he can make it better, and they work side by side, shoulders bumping, thighs touching, hands crossing, and she seems genuinely pleased with what he helps her make, and her smile makes him feel good.

He doesn’t want to overstay whatever welcome he’s earned himself, so he leaves quickly. He hangs out in the canyon for a bit, pawing through the wreckage from their fight back to the Citadel, and finds a gun that’s perfect for her. Compact, powerful, easy to manage one-handed, he can do the safety on and off with his thumb with finger to spare, so she can probably do it too, even if her hands are smaller. He spends weeks looking for bullets that it will fire. It takes him months to find an amount he deeps respectable (something higher than practical, always, terminally less than necessary).

He takes it to her and shows her how to use it, and she fires it at the rock twice to get a feel for it, and she’s good with it, and it’s good for her, just the right size, and Max feels good that it fits so well. Her grin is so huge, but also soft, and it makes Max’s heart ache with a kind of happiness that catches in his throat. And then the moment passes and she hooks his neck with her arm and noogies him with the metal one, and they’re both laughing and then Max is yelping because she’s pulling his hair and it _hurts_.

She catches on quick enough and tries to untangle it, and she and Max bicker over the best way to do it, and she keeps telling him to shut up because he can’t even see it, but Max is bent over awkward as she tries to pull his hair out of the joints with one hand, face damn near pressed into her stomach, and she seems loose and comfortable but he doesn’t want to ruin it by shoving his face somewhere it doesn’t belong. So he tells her to fuck it and pulls his knife out and rips it through his hair, and he’s free. Furiosa takes one look at him and laughs so hard tears come out of her eyes, says he damn near scalped himself. Max feels his face flush hot like a sunburn and mumbles about not having a choice, since _she’s_ the one who got them caught in the first place.

She sobers up and says she can fix it, still with a smile, but guarded eyes, and disappears into what used to be Immortan Joe’s rooms, and comes back with a clean, shiny razor, brandishing it in a silent offer of a haircut. Max doesn’t like people near his head, and he especially doesn’t like people near his head with sharp pointy objects that could be used to slit throats and poke out eyes, but he sits down cross-legged on the floor, silent consent, and she scrapes away his shaggy, dry hair until he’s left with an almost even buzz cut. It’s actually kind of nice, to be so clean-cut, and he mumbles about how he should do his face, too, and suddenly she’s spinning him around and placing the razor gently against his jugular, and scraping up.

He flinches instinctually, before his sense overrules his fear, and he tells himself this is Furiosa, and she’s not going to hurt him. He lets her scrape away the dirty beard, the tug and pull of her work somehow relaxing, and he lets his muscles relax, lets his body stand down, and it’s the calmest he’s felt for years. When she’s done, Furiosa just sits next to him, shoulders touching, and his body feels like its liquid electricity with how much she’s touched him in the past hour. He leaves not long after, anxious about the way his body reacts to her, not wanting to offend her. He leaves guilty and embarrassed and longing for her so bad it hurts.

He’s in what’s left of the Green Place digging through the acidic sludge with a metal stick when he finds a lead box still sealed and intact. It takes him an hour to fish it out without getting chemical burns on his hands, and he rolls it in the dirt and dust to wipe off the last of the sludge before prying it open with his knife. There’s a piece of white cloth inside, all folded up, pristine, and he unfolds it carefully as the sun crests a golden dawn on the horizon, and he finds five, tiny, _tiny_ seeds at the center, and he knows _exactly_ what to do with them.

He takes them to her, straight to her, because they are her inheritance, her legacy, impossibly resilient _just like her_ , ready to bloom brilliant beautiful _just like she is_. She’s speechless at first, mouth gaping and eyes shining, and Max stares at her openly and wide-eyed with longing and love. She looks up to ask what he wants for them, and he looks away quickly, face turning hot again, mumbling that he doesn’t want anything.

She drags him up to the New Green Place with her, telling everyone who asks that _he_ found them for her, and his heart swells with pleased pride every time she smiles after saying it.

He stays with her long into the day, just being together. She talks more than him, likes to tell stories about growing up with the war boys, about the rigs she’s worked on. He tells stories from the desert in short, terse words that she seems to appreciate anyway. He realizes too late that it’s night and he’s missed any chance at getting a spare bed, but he gets up anyway, not wanting to keep her. It’s like she reads his mind and she tells him he’s never going to be able to find someplace to sleep, and she drags him to her bed, drops down in it hanging off his hand, silently tell him to join her.

Max’s heart feels like it’s in his throat, but he drops down with her, puts his back to her so he can face the room, so he’s between her and the threat – even in this place he knows is safe, he still will keep watch for her. She immediately wraps her arms and legs around him, startling him, but he wraps his hands over hers across his chest, and it feels _so good_ to be held by her. He falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, commented, and kudo-ed the first part. They really gave me life, and I meant to say so back then, but stuff happened, and this got postponed until I had the time to finish it. I hope you enjoy the conclusion! These two are so gentle and cute, it makes me so happy. 
> 
> I meant to say last time, "I carry your heart" is from an e.e. cummings poem: "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) / I am never without it," the full length of which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17533-i-carry-your-heart-with-me-i-carry-it-in

He ends up staying for days, every night silently asking permission by standing a few feet away, waiting until she jerks her chin at him, silently saying, “Get your ass over here.” He stays with her every night, and she wraps her arms around his body, not squeezing, but tight, presses her face into the back of his neck, and he knows he’s sweaty and gritty and disgusting, but everything is now, and she doesn’t seem to mind.

He stays for two nights, three, four, soaking up as much of her as he can, doing odd jobs around the Citadel, making minor repairs to his car. The vuvalini catch him in the garden one day and teach him things about plants he never knew; how to make them grow, how to make sick plants strong, how flowers won’t bloom if they don’t get enough attention. The oldest of them pulls out a long, thin knife, but it doesn’t make Max’s skin itch with fear; he trusts her. She reaches up and carefully cuts a cactus flower from the top of its thick body and hands it to him.

“Give it to her,” she says, and Max nods, barely able to look her in the eye. He takes it to Furiosa, handing it over in silence, and she smells it, rubs her cheek against it, clears off the table and sets it in the center, a bright spot of pink in a room dusty and red from rock. She wraps her good arm around Max’s waist and presses close, and Max wraps an arm around her shoulders.

After five nights, he’s got an itch under his skin screaming for him to leave. Can’t stay in one place too long; trouble sneaks up on you that way. He knows the Citadel is like a damn castle from those stories his mom used to tell him as a kid, damn near impenetrable even after they opened the doors and let the gnats and scavs who swarmed the base in, but it’s a feeling he doesn’t know how to shake. He’s packing when Furiosa walks in on him, like she knows something’s up, and she takes him in silently, then sits down next to him and helps, stocking bullets, checking weapons.

“You know you’re safe here,” she says while she works. Max grunts. “You know you’re always w-welcome.”

Max stares at the shirt in his hands. He wants to tell her that that’s not the problem. He’s grateful – very, very grateful – that she has made room for him here, at the Citadel, in her bed, but he can’t stay. Doesn’t know how. He jerks his head once, yes, and stuffs the shirt in the bad. He’s gotten better about talking, but right now all his words are gone like dust on the Waste.

She helps him finish packing. Stands up with him, wraps her hand around his neck and cups the back of his skull in her palm. Presses her forehead to his, and Max closes his eyes, exhales, inhales. She lets go and steps back and nods at him, and he stares into her eyes, bright green and grey, and he nods back.

\------

and he _leaves_.

But this time it’s fine; it’s okay. She knows he’ll be back this time, because they’re married, because he’s hers, and he’ll always come back to her. It eases something in her chest, takes some of the tension out of her shoulder blades. And it’s fine. It’s okay.

And it is. He comes back a week later, the shortest he’s ever been gone. He doesn’t bring anything except a really nasty wound on his forehead and a concussion, and Furiosa is prepared to ruin whoever did this, but the doctor says he’ll be fine so she tries to calm down a little. He collapsed almost as soon as he got back, and she sits by his side until he wakes up, calms him down when he forgets where he is, walks him up to her bed, and leaves him there to sleep.

He sleeps on and off and doesn’t get out of bed for three days. She brings him food and water, and changes the bandage on his head, and checks his pupils to make sure the concussion is getting better. She’s up in the garden, helping fix the irrigation, when Honey Myrtle comes over and hands her an orange flower with a long stem.

“Give it to him,” she says, tucking her knife back into her sleeve. Furiosa thinks about commenting on how, if they keep picking all the garden’s flowers, there won’t be any left, but instead she tucks the flower into her shirt and goes back to work. When they’re done, she doesn’t go to the cook rock with the rest of them for food and something to drink, but instead returns to Max.

He’s not in her bed, and for a moment she panics, thinks he left, but then she spots him scrunched up by the crack in the wall, staring out it at the Wasteland.

“Hey,” she says, startling him a bit. He jumps, sees her, relaxes. She walks over and takes the flower out of her shirt and tucks it behind his ear smoothly. He doesn’t even flinch.

“From Honey Myrtle,” she says, and sits down in front of him, leaning back between his knees to put her head on his stomach. His hands hover awkwardly on his knees, so she reaches up and pulls them down to her chest. She thinks not for the first time how much she appreciates him. She made herself who she is very early to keep herself safe, and watching Wives come and go she knows how dangerous it is to be anything else. But it was never like that with Max, and she wishes she could show him just how much his slowness and gentleness meant to her.

That said, she also really wants to have sex with him. It’s not a feeling she’s very familiar with, but she can usually recognize it when she has it. She’s gotten it – infrequently – before, mostly with women, but also one or two of the war boys she considered friends and then some. But Max is different than all of that. She loves him more fiercely than she’s loved anything else in her life, except the Green Place. She wants to hang on to him with all her might and never let go, she jealously wants to keep him all for herself, keep him here, where she can get at him all the time, wants to kiss his neck and rub her face in his short, prickly hair, wants to feel what it’s like between her legs, what _he’s_ like, in her, with her. But as kind as he’s been with her, she wants to be equally so, and if these are things Max doesn’t want, well. She’s more than prepared to accept that. She will have him any way he will give himself.

\------

It takes more than a week for most of the symptoms to clear up. By the time they’re gone, Max is going stir crazy. He wants very desperately to get the fuck out, and the worst thing is, if anyone asked, he wouldn’t even be able to tell them _why_. Furiosa has kept him close the entire time, arm around his waist when he gets dizzy and trips, tucking his head into the space under her chin when the sunlight is too bright. He’s had more physical contact with her in the past week and change than he has with all other human beings combined since he got on the road in the first place. And it’s been nice. It’s been incredible. But his damn brain won’t let it last.

He tells her this time, thinks it’s the least he could do, after her kindness to him the past week – the past forever, really. He brings food and water to her room one night when she’s elbow-deep in a new engine she hopes could run without gasoline – Gas Town not wanting to share any more, not since the People Eater’s death. She takes a break to eat with him, and he wipes the grease off her fingers carefully, getting them as clean as he possibly can, and then they eat.

“’m leavin’,” he tells her, halfway through the meal. She smiles small at him, with her mouth and not her eyes.

“I know.” They eat in silence for a long time, then she says, “I’ll miss you.”

He grimaces. “I have to.”

“I know,” she says, face open and honest. “It’s okay. Because I know you’ll come back.”

He blinks. “If you want me to.”

She breaks into a smile, half laughing. “Of course I want you to. I always want you to.”

He stares at her, and she stares back, until he can’t take it anymore and looks down at his food. He hadn’t thought – he didn’t realize –

He could do that.

 

Three days later, he’s pawing through a wreak off the road near Gas Town when he sees a party of trucks and junkers leave. It looks like the war party that tried to run Furiosa to ground last time, and it makes something in his stomach twist in anger and fear. The Citadel was doing good; people were happy, taken care of; they were making real progress in the New Green Place. Fuck if he’d let whoever ran Gas Town now ruin that.

He jumps into his car and shortcuts across the desert, off-road, damn near driving off a couple small cliffs in his rush to beat the war party to the Citadel. It’s a day’s drive; he beats them by a handful of hours.

\------

Furiosa does not feel fear when Max tells her Gas Town sent a war party their way. She remembers the stories of how Immortan Joe fought the old Bullet Farmer years before she’d been abducted. The Citadel was too mighty to fall to Gas Town. The only question that remained was what they actually wanted.

She preps the war boys, arming them and lining them up along the ridges and caves that cover the Citadel’s edges, and Capable climbs up a poll above the garden to keep watch, calling out distances that baby war boys run to her as they get closer. By the time the war party pulls into the gulch, the scavs and gnats and everyone who doesn’t want to fight are safe in the belly of the Citadel, and every war boy with a gun has it trained on the party.

Furiosa walks out to the platform, sits down on the edge, and lets her legs dangle over. She’s not scared. She won’t give them the satisfaction. Max neither, but she can feel his anxiety like a swarm in the air as he hovers just behind her, gun in hand.

The war party rolls to a stop, and a man climbs out of the middle, biggest rig and stands on the hood, awkward and clumsy. Not a roadie at all. Furiosa thinks he’s her age, with no hair on his face, clothes fancy and dark like the People Eater’s before him.

“I came to trade,” he yells, voice low, barely reaching her.

“Trade what?” she yells back, and she smiles because she’s a lot louder.

“Gas. For green things.”

She frowns. “Green things?” she yells back. What, does he want seeds? Gas Town doesn’t have the water to run a garden like theirs, and he can go to the Wastes if he thinks he’s getting any of theirs.

“The green things you eat,” he yells back, but she still doesn’t understand. “I want to taste them.”

“Fruit, child,” Honey Myrtle whispers to her. “He wants what we grow.”

Furiosa scowls. They don’t have much of that yet, all the plants still young, most of the seeds haven’t even sprouted. Half the fruit needs to be reseeded anyway, there isn’t much to eat and less to give away. But the gasless engine doesn’t run yet, and they can’t keep running of fumes. She doesn’t want to give the little fruit they have away, but they need the gas badly.

“How much gas?” she yells back. Maybe they can give a little of the fruit away, but not all of it. They’re the only ones with green things anymore; they can demand as much gas as they want.

“One barrel per green thing,” he yells back, and Furiosa laughs at him openly. She makes sure it’s loud, and the war boys all join in, the whole gulch laughing at him.

“Twenty barrels per green thing,” she yells back, and the war boys crow.

The man waits until they’re quiet before saying anything. “Listen, gnat, you don’t deal here. You’re gonna run dry soon, and after you’re all outta gas, I’ll just make the same deal with the man who kills you and your fug friends.”

That makes Furiosa angry, but before she can say or do anything, Max is next to her, gun up and pointed at the man on the ground, and she knows his aim won’t miss. He doesn’t say anything, but words are not necessary; the threat is clear: _don’t talk to her like that_. Furiosa smiles wickedly at him.

“Call off your dog, gnat,” the man on the ground yells, mocking, “before we drop him like the feral he is.”

Furiosa stands, to better tower over him. “The Road Warrior is _mine_ ,” she growls, “married ‘til we’re dust. You don’t _talk_ to him that way.” She’s silent, lets it sink in, then adds, “You don’t talk to any of us that way. You think you’re tough? You’re only here ‘cause we did your dirty work for you when we killed the People Eater. Remember that. You aren’t nothing next to us. So leave.” She points out to the wasteland. “Before we send you off to meet your boss and take your gas for ourselves.”

The man on the ground only wastes a little time before accepting defeat and getting back in his rig. They drive off with gas dripping out their exhaust pipes and the war boys cheering their retreat. Furiosa smiles all teeth at their backs and turns victorious to the vuvalini behind her.

“What happes when the gas runs out?” Toast asks, eyes wide. Furiosa shakes her head.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out. They can’t run us around; they needed to learn that.” She touches Toast’s shoulder reassuringly as she walks by, back inside, immediately mobbed by baby war boys chanting her name. _No,_ she thinks, _no man will kill me._

\------

“Call off your dog, gnat,” the People Eater’s replacement yells, “before we drop him like the feral he is.” He talks pretty, for a gas town man, Max thinks, but pretty is all he is. He looks like one strong wind would knock him right off that rig, and Max knows he’s too stupid to be afraid of Max’s bullet.

Furiosa stands, and if she gives him the word, Max will put a bullet in the man without blinking. He doesn’t care what he called Max – he’s heard it all before – but for what he called Furiosa and the vuvalini, Max would beat him to death with his bare hands if he had to.

“The Road Warrior is _mine_ ,” Furiosa says, voice rumbling from her very core, and _damn_ the things it does to him like that. He’s so distracted by it, he doesn’t even realize what she means until she keeps talking. “Married ‘til we’re dust. You don’t _talk_ to him like that.” The words echo in the silence of the Citadel, and Max feels like the world’s slowed down as he hears them. He turns his head and looks at her, can’t keep a straight face. Married? _What??_

She ignores him, keeps talking. “You don’t talk to any of us that way. You think you’re tough? You’re only here ‘cause we did your dirty work for you when we killed the People Eater. Remember that. You aren’t nothing next to us. So leave.” She points out to the wasteland with her metal arm, the one Max helped her build. “Before we send you off to meet your boss and take your gas for ourselves.”

Max looks down at the man, sees him fume and rage and ultimately shrivel, and Max looks back at Furiosa, tall and proud in every inch of herself, face as cold as the desert night and as unforgiving as the Wastes. Not for the first time, and not, he’s sure, for the last, Max is in awe of her.

And she thinks they’re _married_. Why – _when?_ Was that why she was being so nice? Because she thought she had to be? Max didn’t know what to think, just stared and stared as the war party rolled a sad retreat and Furiosa turned to the vuvalini triumphant and brilliant. _Married._ What the _fuck_.

 

She’s busy the rest of the day, making nice with the last few powers that be, crowing in celebration with the war boys, quietly plotting with the vuvalini and the special few men included in that inner circle. Max is one of them, and he tries to listen to her plans, he really does, but mostly it goes in one ear and out the other. _Married._ No way.

They break the meeting late at night, long after the sun went down, and everyone splits off to go to sleep. Furiosa holds her good hand out to him and he walks to her. She reaches down and slips it into his, pressing herself along his side and gently steering him down the corridor to her room.

“It was nice to finally say,” she says quietly as they walk. Max knows immediately what she means, can’t help looking anxiously around to make sure no one can hear. She lets him, doesn’t say anything about it, only continues when he’s satisfied they’re alone. “It’s kind of embarrassing, it took me a long time to figure out.” She smiles a goofy smile up at him, nose crinkling, and Max can barely look at her with how much it makes his heart ache. “But I’m glad I did. I’m glad we’re,” she smiles small and crooked and with her eyes, “married.” She squeezes his hand gently as she says the word.

“We’re not.” The words are out of Max’s mouth before he even knew he thought them, so low and quiet, caught in the back of his throat, that he thinks maybe she didn’t hear. But her posture changes, from relaxed to rigid, and he knows she did, knows she’s owed more.

“I don’t know why,” he pauses, can’t breathe, “you think that.” He swallows hard. “But,” and he halts, can’t pick the next word; _I didn’t mean – we’re not actually._ She waits for him, and eventually he realizes what he actually means.

“You deserve better.”

She stops walking, and Max stops, too. She lets go of his hand and steps away, turns to face him, but Max can’t make himself. Her posture’s changed again. It’s how she stands for a fight.

“ _I_ can decide what I deserve. And Max,” she pushes his shoulder, forces him to face her, “I choose you. Do you not choose me?”

And Max looks up at her, at all that she is, at what she became, not just a woman running from bad guys; a leader, a powerful person who wasn’t a bad guy, a kind person with he biggest damn heart Max had ever seen who never let anyone push her around or make her do something she didn’t want – and that included, Max realized, himself. _You idiot_.

“I’ll do anything for you,” he says, and means it.

“Then be married to me,” Furiosa says, immediately. “Stay with me. Your terms – leave as much as you need to. But always come back to me. Promise me,” she says, reaching out to him, jabbing her finger into his chest.

“I promise,” he says, and he reaches up and takes her hand in his, holds it tight. And then she’s moving again, rushing forward and pressing her forehead against his, and he wraps his hands around the back of her neck and it feels like he anchors his soul there with how hard he hangs on, soaks in every part of her. “I promise,” he mumbles, and she wraps her good arm around his shoulders and presses her whole body against his and says,

“Damn straight you do.”


End file.
